AVIATION/ EXTENT OF NEW SEARCH FOR AF FL447 DISCLOSED

The French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA) has said that next month's renewed search for the wreckage of AIR FRANCE Flight 447 will concentrate on a 20nm (37km) circle centred on the last known position (LKP) of the aircraft. The search, the 4th phase in the effort to locate the crashed Airbus A330, will be based on a sytematic examination of all areas not previously explored by acoustic imaging, said the BEA. US-based scientific modelling specialist Metron has assisted with piecing together the results of the 3 previous searches since the loss of the aircraft on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 passengers and crew onboard. In an analysis of these searches, it states that the "large uncertainty" in the crash position and the difficulties of underwater search activity means the combined effort has "effectively searched only 58%" of the region under scrutiny. This figure, the BEA cautioned, assumes that the locator beacons from the flight recorders were working after the impact. If they were damaged, or were not functioning, the detection probability drops to just 29%. "This means substantial additional effort will be required to insure a high probability of success," they added. Metron has recommended that resources should be deployed to investigate specific targets identified by previous searches which were "suggestive of debris" but not examined, in order to "remove any doubts as to their nature". The BEA also said that one of the "major causes of uncertainty" in the location of the wreckage has been the "lack of good ocean current data" in the vicinity of the accident for the period June 1 to 10, 2009. "Detailed and accurate knowledge of currents would have allowed us to perform a reverse-drift analysis that might have substantially reduced the uncertainty in the wreck location," the BEA said. BEA said that the region of interest to the search team is a 40nm circle around the last known position of Flight 447, which was enroute from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, and that the new search will begin with the innermost 20nm, as seen in map above. NOTE: The Map above shows the Last Known Position (LKP) of AF447. The innermost circle is the 20nm search area surrounded by the 40nm circle. The gray shaded areas are those that have been previously searched.